Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Birthday Dress Muslin and Pattern Making Notes

Here is the muslin for my 43rd Birthday dress. (Please see previous post for inspiration dress.)

Muslin is not so flattering, so ignore that if you can. Also, the largeness of the buttons is causing some weird dragging on the bodice. I am hoping to fix that on the real dress with strategic button placement and support. Aside from that, I think this version incorporates all the changes that I detailed in the last post, and I am pretty happy with it. Ready to move to the next step.

If you are interested in the pattern making process behind this dress, keep reading.

I start out with the sloper that I developed in my pattern making class. For this dress, I traced four of the pieces from my five piece sloper. ( I also have a dress and jacket sloper.) (My sleeve is the fifth piece of this sloper.)

The first thing I do is make a map of the new dress. For example, I took the front bodice piece and made all of the style changes that I thought I would need to do for the dress. (You can click on any picture to make it clearer.) Making a map lets me see what pattern pieces I will need to make later. For this map, added the button placket thingy, took half an inch off the neck, and some off the armhole.

After I finished my map, I traced off the pattern pieces from the map (NEVER CUT OUT THE MAP!) and added seam allowances. (I haven't cut out the button placket thingy pattern piece yet, because I have to figure out the fit of the bodice first. )

Then I cut the bodice out of muslin and perfect the fit, transferring all of the changes to the pattern pieces.

Once the bodice fits, I move on to the skirt. First I make sure that the inside dart matches the dart placement on the bodice. My skirt sloper has 2 darts on every pattern piece, so I decided to just close the outside dart to make my skirt an A-line. (My first version of this skirt was a very teeny tiny A line. Too much like a straight skirt and not at all flattering. Tossed it.)

To close the dart and add flare to the skirt, you draw a line from the tip of the dart, down the rest of the skirt, perpendicular to the grainline. Cut cup the line and one leg of the dart. (This will cut the pattern into two pieces.) Then close the dart by placing one dart leg on top of the other and taping it down. (If this does not make sense to you, try enlarging the picture to see more clearly.) (I also added an extra inch of flare at the side of the skirt hem, fyi.) Then trace the pattern piece. (In the picture I have the modified and traced pieces next to each other.)

I after I cut out the skirt pieces and sew everything together, I check for fit and fiddle with everything until I am happy. Then I work on all the detail pieces like the button placket thingy and facings.

Time to go to bed. Hopefully I will finish this dress soon and post it on my birthday.